Monday, January 19, 2009

Lillehammer

We are back from another quick jaunt out of town. Norway, this time, and after what it costs to spend a few days in Norway, we may not be leaving the apartment let alone the country for a little while. We stayed in Lillehammer, which was very easy to get to thanks to some previous year's experience from traveling companions and the wonder of a device they use in Europe known as a "train." We skied at Hafjell, where some of the 1994 Olympic skiing events took place. As seen above, the Lillehammer Olympic Logo Cave Art Running Man Torch Guy is still carved out of the trees on the hillside opposite.

There was a sign at the top of one of the runs that said "Women's Downhill" in English, which your correspondent took to mean that it had served as the course for the ladies' competition in the fastest and most suicidal of ski races. Apparently not; as we discovered on a plaque near the lodge on the final day, the less-suicidal slalom races were held there. Fortunately, this knowledge came only after your correspondent thoroughly enjoyed zipping down the fictitious Olympic downhill course at speeds that bordered on suicidal given his skill level as a skier.

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Guatemala? Rio de Janeiro? Huh?

This journal once chronicled the experience of a low-level American diplomat living in Guatemala. Then he went to Latvia, and Afghanistan, and then back "home" to Washington, DC for a bit. He is now serving in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. If you are one of the few people of no blood relation to the authors who has come here in search of Guatemalan content, here are a few choices from the archives that we like:

In Afghanistan, the photographic opportunities were often limited to what we could sneak with a point-and-shoot camera out the bulletproof window of a speeding SUV. But sometimes we got out and about. A few favorites from that tour:

We've also vacationed aggressively in each region we've been posted in, and taken some epic home leave trips, usually leading to better photos than those where we were posted. Those photos are included in the blog, but somehow holiday snaps seem beneath this sidebar.